He says later in the interview that he wanted to come out to be an example for kids who — like him — feel isolated and different. While many people (including whoever wrote his Wikipedia entry) chalked his coming out up to a gimmick and publicity stunt, it took a lot of courage. You can’t negate that he was the very first pro wrestler to be openly gay. Being the first anything is daunting enough — but being the first openly gay pro wrestler? I can’t even begin to imagine how scary that must have been.

Chris Klucsarits didn’t know how people became straight, or if there was such a process. He just knew that, at age 5, he was obsessed with a male friend of the family. The boy was good-looking, athletic, and a little older than him, Klucsarits recalls of his earliest same-sex interest.

“I don’t know why I thought this, but, I thought that once you kissed your first girl, it’d be like a light-switch and you’d turn straight,” he said.

So Klucsarits went for that first kiss at about age 11 while living in Queens, N.Y. He went roller-skating with his buddies, like normal, and found the girl who was going to be the one. He eventually skated her home and then, ironically, standing in the gutter while she was on the curb so as to not tower over her, they kissed.

“But there were no fireworks,” Klucsarits said.

They parted ways minutes later and, about a block away, Klucsarits realized, “I was gay, that I would be gay for the rest of my life and that my life would not be easy.”

He cried on the way home. He even had to stop to re-gain his composure before returning home.

“The next three or four months were brutal; they were really hard because I knew I was not like everyone else,” he said.